Packaged goods, such as boxes of cereal, often have a premium or prize inserted in them. These premiums or prizes typically are provided in a bandolier of serial packages, each package containing one such prize and being separated from adjacent packages by a seam or seal. Apparatus has been developed to automatically separate one packaged premium from a bandolier of such premiums and to insert the premium into the larger package of goods.
Interest in such inserted premiums has increased because they can be a targeted and very effective form of marketing. A sample inserted into a larger package or box of goods bought by a consumer has no extra distribution cost, has typically negligible additional weight and is highly targeted at a group of consumers which the marketer is trying to reach: consumers who have actually made a decision to buy a related product.
Conventional apparatus for doing this have placed limitations on the kinds of premiums which can be inserted: they have to be tough. Where a premium takes the form of a paper coupon or other flat medium, a bandolier of such coupons can pass through sets of rollers. The coupons are separated by lines of perforations. To separate a coupon from the bandolier, one set of rollers stops and another adjacent set keeps going, having the effect of putting tension on a perforation line and bursting the coupon along the perforation line from the rest of the bandolier. Typical of this kind of premium insertion apparatus is U.S. Pat. No. 6,722,108 issued to Kotsiopoulos. But burst-roller coupon inserters of this type would simply smash a fragile packaged premium. Quite apart from the fact that a pair of friction rollers would simply smash flat any fragile premium inserted into them, the sudden acceleration involved in bursting one premium from another can damage a fragile packaged premium (such as a pretzel or other baked good) to such an extent that the premium will be rendered unacceptable. A need therefore persists in developing premium separators and inserters which will place less stress on the packaged premium.